Except in rare cases, the people employed at this business are paid by the piece, and all ages are represented in the different branches of the industry. There are girls as young as fourteen, and women as old as forty. The little girls tie the feathers on to the lines, and make from $2 to $5 a week. The work of preparing and curling the feathers pays the best, and women who devote themselves to this branch make from $10 to $40 a week. This last sum is large pay; but it must be stated that those who make it do so in the busiest season, and they work hard, not only during the day, but at night, or, may be, they have some one at their homes to whom a portion of the work is sent from the shop, and in that way they are assisted to receive such large pay. Nevertheless, if a woman thoroughly understands the trade, she can always be sure of making good wages. Some exceptionally proficient women will average $30 a week the year round. Take a hundred expert workers, and each of them will average $15 to $20 a week during the twelve months. The little girls never earn very much, because the work they can do is limited to "stringing" the feathers, which is the technical term for tying the feathers on a line.
When a girl enters the establishment, she generally works the first two weeks for nothing, then the superintendent is able to see what she can do, and she makes $2, $3, or $4 a week, as the case may be; in six or eight months she ought to be quite expert at the business. To be successful she must have good taste. She should be able to "lay" the feather out nicely, so that it will have a graceful appearance when it is finished. And then she must have good judgment in putting the feathers together, for it may not be known, but it is the fact, that the plume which appears on the hat to be a single feather is made up of a number of small pieces; this good judgment, then, consists, as one manufacturer frankly stated, in not being wasteful in selecting,—in short, in being careful not to pick out too many good pieces. Though there are a great number of girls in this business, there are very few who possess all these qualifications. That class of help is of course a great saving to the employer, and consequently is always sure of employment. One man said that on account of high rent alone he wanted to hire all such women. "We have to economize our room," he remarked, "and one such woman would be worth to us half a dozen poor workers, who would take up just six times as much space and waste a lot of material in the bargain. Such expert workers will make three or four times as much as other women, doing the same kind of work."
The trade is a healthy one, or, to speak more accurately, there are no special features about it to make it unhealthy. Probably the worst feature about it is the crowding together of so many girls and women in one large room. They sit on benches, or stools, without backs, working at a long, low table that runs the length of the apartment. On damp days the windows have to be shut, making the atmosphere of the place close and unwholesome. But the rooms are generally large, with high ceilings. Five hundred girls are employed in the largest establishment of the kind in New York. The nominal hours of work are from eight in the morning until six in the evening, though very often, in the busy season, the girls are required to work at night as late as half-past seven or eight o'clock.
There are a few women in New York who profess to teach feather curling; I say "profess," for I have it on good authority that some of them have no practical knowledge of the business, and aim only at securing a generous tuition-fee from the pupil. Now and then, however, a teacher can be found who is able to impart the necessary knowledge. It has been charged by women that those who learn privately in this way are not able to secure good positions in any of the feather curling establishments, the allegation being that the proprietors of the same have formed a "ring" to exclude such help. From such investigation as I have made in regard to this matter, I do not believe that this statement is correct. Doubtless many such pupils, after working for a short time in such establishments, have been discharged, but I think the real reason has been that they were not competent to do the work. And it can readily be imagined that the facilities for learning a trade like this would be far better in a large house, where several hundred girls were employed, or even fifty or seventy-five girls, than they would be in a class of half a dozen pupils, who had probably between them about as many feathers upon which to work. It would be much pleasanter to learn the trade from a teacher; but there are many practical objections against the feasibility of so doing. If the girl has not worked herself up from the very foot of the business, and does not have a knowledge of its preparatory stages, she will be likely to find that if a feather has been misplaced, or is out of order in any way, she could not put it in proper shape as well as one who had commenced at the beginning of the business.
Rather than have any girl or woman hastily decide to learn this trade, I will, at the risk of repetition, briefly recapitulate: the earnings are good if you are thoroughly competent; and this may be said to be true of the future, although there is a prospect, probably a very strong prospect, that feathers may not be in such demand as they have been, and as they are now. You will have to work hard to make good pay. The work is tolerably cleanly, but your associates, if you are particularly nice in your ideas of companionship, may not always please you. If you are competent you may be able to take work home, but the facilities for doing it, and the want of that spirit of competition which prevails, to a great extent, in a large work-room, may not enable you to do so much work.
PHOTOGRAPHY.
It is a little singular that in a great city like New York, there should be but one lady photographer, while in the western part of our country there are quite a number. The photographers I speak of do all the work of making a picture,—posing the sitter, preparing the chemicals, and operating the camera. One reason why there are so few ladies in this business is the fact, that up to within a short time it has been a very disagreeable occupation on account of the nature of some of the chemicals that were used—they would soil the hands very easily, and the stains could not be removed. But recent improvements in the art have removed this objection, and prominent male photographers predict that it will not be long before their business will be largely carried on by women.
A contributor to a London magazine, writing some years ago, on the subject of the employment of women in photography, said: "I have pleasure in bearing testimony to the fact, that in photography there is room for a larger amount of female labor; that it is a field exactly suited to even the conventional notions of woman's capacity; and further, that it is a field unsurrounded with traditional rules, with apprenticeship, and with vested rights, and it is one in which there is no sexual hostility to their employment." These remarks may, with perfect safety and propriety, be applied to photography in this country.
There are several branches of the art in which women and girls have always been engaged, viz., the mounting of photographs, the retouching of negatives, and the coloring of photographs.